Maxta is a new player in the software defined storage space that caught my attention. Their solution creates a storage layer across server side flash + magnetic storage. The product is downloadable, 100% software only.

I received a whitepaper from them yesterday on which most of this article is based. Consider this a primer, later this week I will interview the CEO of Maxta, Yoram Novick.
The solution works by installing their software on each of the servers you want to include and Maxta creates a storage pool across them.

Magnetic disks are leveraged for capacity and flash is used as a caching layer, with the capability of accelerating both reads and writes. For speed and redundancy, the software replicates writes between the server flash of different hosts, and de-stages to magnetic disks later.

Maxta’s architecture provides storage abstraction at VM level, rather than at block or file level. The solution is designed for simplicity of use: assigning LUNs, RAID groups and storage networking happens under the bonnet.

The architecture further features in-line compression and de-duplication to leverage storage capacity, and offers mobility and backup feautures (HA, DRS, Snapshots). The solution requires a 1Gb private ethernet network between the servers.

Maxta indicates that all functionality is integrated in the virtualization UI. Exactly how the solution integrates with the various hypervisors and how it stacks up against VMware’s vSAN and other competitors, will be questions I will come back to later this week.

Should you have any questions you would like me to ask CEO Yoram Novick, be sure to post them below in the comments! -update, somehow comments box doesn’t work, alternatively mail to willem@indigoinfra.nl or tweet-